Warren Ellis is a writer you may know from the awesome Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., Transmetropolitan, SVK, and many other things. He was on the most recent episode of the Nerdist podcast (via Skype from England) to discuss his new book Gun Machine and other things. Mostly, we listened for the swearing and the “not a single f–k was given that day” attitude. To that end, we’ve collected some of our favorite out-of-context Warren Ellis quotes from the episode and put them in no particular order below.

“A friend of mine met [Helen Mirren] a couple of years back, and he was of a certain age shall we say when many of certain kinds of films had her in during his adolescence. And he walked up to her and said, ‘Miss Mirren, I just wanted to say, your films. I loved your films when I was younger.’ She gave him the most dazzling smile, apparently, and said, ‘I do hope you enjoyed my breasts.'”

“I get cranky when I wake up. Jesus. The whole five years of Transmetropolitan is basically just me first thing in the morning.”

“Every Mark Millar comic has someone sodomized, you know.”

“I wrote a 1,300 page political science fiction graphic novel. If you want to call me a ‘sell out’ after that, I will laugh in your face at the same time as I sh-t on your head.”

“Any idiot could have wandered onto the Disney lot and said, ‘You’re not going to run John Carter against The Hunger Games. You’re insane, and let me explain to you why.’ […] If you’re taking something out as what they conceive a ‘four quadrant film’, and your plot is as follows: ‘white soldier wanders into a cave, falls asleep, wakes up on Mars, gets superpowers through putting out no effort of his own, beats leagues of strangely-colored monsters, gets the girl, wins, the end’ — if you think that’s going to play up against The Hunger Games, which is ‘poor girl from massively underprivileged society is threatened, coerced, menaced, and ultimately betrayed by authority while she fights for the right of her people to eat’ . . . it’s easier to find relevance in the present day.”

“What if a bear wants to suddenly have sex with me?”

[While discussing ‘Red’] “One of the great journalistic sports of the ’80s and ’90s were incredibly sh-tty interviews with John Malkovich.”

“On [the subject of] traffic, one of the funniest things I ever saw were people in Los Angeles when it rained once.”

“Imagine the dispute between Twitter and Instagram as a cable television carriage dispute. […] It’s the kind of bullsh-t that television gets its fossilized ass involved with. That is a sign of the times. That’s a sign that they are now big media, and all their problems are basically going to be pissing matches, and it’s not about the users. It’s about what the users can be used for, and what the users can be leveraged against.”

[When asked about the weather at his home in Southend-on-Sea, England.] “Much as you would expect: dark, grim, rainy, cold, livestock dying of exposure, pirates…”

“I was first [at Comic-Con San Diego] in ’97, and there were 45,000 people, and it already felt like too many.” [There were over 130,000 attending in 2012.]

[On Robert Kirkman (author of ‘The Walking Dead’) joking at Ellis via Twitter that he shouldn’t do the Nerdist podcast.] “I don’t pay attention to Kirkman because his voice is so muffled from being so deep inside that money bin anyway.”

[When Chris Hardwick suggests taking a break to move around.] “Do I have to move as well? I don’t remember signing up for moving or any of that sh-t.”

[When asked, “Are you doing anything with Nick Cave at the moment?”] “Where’s the off button? I know it’s here somewhere. I’m hoping it’s next to the ‘Remote Death’ button. I’m still looking for the ‘Air Strike’ button. Failed by the internet again.” [Context for this one: Warren Ellis the writer doesn’t like being confused with Warren Ellis the musician who works with Nick Cave.]

“Teledildonics.”

~ All quotes transcribed by Gamma Squad.

The whole 90-minute episode can be found at Nerdist if you’d like to hear Warren Ellis say the word Teledildonics and perhaps turn that into a ringtone and email it to us…

It was amazing to finally hear the voice of a writer I’ve admired and essentially worshipped for so long, and have his voice be as curmudgeonly and abrasive as I thought it would be, while still being hilarious. I loved every second of this podcast, I just really wish they would have delved more into his actual material than ask him about his thoughts on email lists and the internet.
for those that don’t know, this guy is one of the most prolific and brilliant graphic novel (and regular novel) writers we have out there. People often recognize Alan Moore and Frank Miller as the be-all, end-alls when it comes to graphic novels (with good reason of course) but for me, Warren Ellis is right up there with life-changing material. The guy has covered everything from the superhero genre (Planetary, Supergod), to sci/fi (Transmetropolitian, Ocean, Ministry Of Space), to zombies and horror (BlackGas, Scars) and post-apocalyptic (FreakAngels). 95% of his many books are must-own, in my humble opinion. He’s even broke a lot of ground with the graphic novel medium, being one of the first to have a serious webcomic (again, FreakAngels) and even being the first to write a graphic novel with ink that disappears/reappears (SVK).
I implore all of you to check out all of his material, as well as his 1st novel “Crooked Little Vein” and his recently released “Gun Machine.”

Met Ellis in San Fransisco some years ago. My girlfriend was wearing an Einsturzende Neubauten shirt (she knew the whole story, but she’d never had an EN shirt before and we’d just bought it). He wasn’t particularly displeased. Chiefly because she has a pretty nice rack and you could smell how much whiskey he’d already had from the front door.